there'll be coins on my eyes

[playercharon]

zyrahaas‌:

Killmongur blinked, staring at him for a second. Before she began laughing, it was the most roundabout way to ask if she was seeing someone or if she was intrested. But given who it was, she wasn’t at all suprised that Charon didn’t come out and ask the question point blank. Wasn’t really his style.

Sitting back on the bench, she watched as he got up _ clearly unable to find what he was looking for- and made his way over to the tracks. Kicking and turning over rocks around the area.

She had to hand it to him, he was dedicated.

The mage persed her lips, thinking on the question a little. “ There is intrest, in a person. Maybe two but no one imparticular, no.”  rasing a brow she looked him over. “ Why? Would I get a discount if there was a Mrs. or Mr Killmongur? Cause if that’s the case I should definitly make things happen then.”  chuckling thinking about Moon and how much she would hate this whole conversation.

“Yeah.” Charon glanced over his shoulder, glad to see that Killmongur was at least smiling and not looking like she wanted to bite his head off--though, now that he thought about it, she never really looked like the second option. Maybe she just wasn’t that frightening after all, no fangs or horns ready to pop out at any moment and scare the shit out of him. Or knock him into a train. 

“I call it the love bug special.” He was mostly joking--but then again, managing to find love in this hell game was no small accomplishment. The truth of it was--and he’d never, ever admit this to her in a million years--he’d come to think of her as a sort of mom, or at least a big sister, and it’d be nice if she had a partner, some more support. “Do I know them?” he asked. 

He crouched again and began turning over every rock in the area--slowly--before he had a better idea. He stood up, pulled out his staff, and with a great blast of a wind spell, turned over stone in a ten foot radius. 

Sadly--still no secret key out. 

[playercharon]

zcndi‌:

When he started talking about coding, Jal fully intended to stop him. That, however, would be rude. And they’re trying to play nice with others ( well, ones that don’t immediately benefit them ). “I meant… I meant like, cracking codes. Like Da Vinci’s, Hammurabi’s. Heiroglyphs and all of that.”

“Oh!” Charon exclaimed, looking far more excited now. While coding--the computer type--was his speciality, the Da Vinci kind was more interesting. It was harder to crack, a real challenge, and then he got to play detective. “Well Heiroglyphs aren’t a code. They’re a language. Though language is a kind of code...” From there, he began to rant about the origin of the glyphs and their purpose, though he cut himself off before he could get too lost in the past. 

“So you want to help me find the code?”

[playercharon]

zyrahaas‌:

“ Aww, Char-char you flatter me.” she teased chuckling a bit as she saw his cheeks redden. It never got old getting the younger player all flustered. Killmongur tried not to do it often. Mainly becuase if she needed him for somthing, she didn’t have the time nor could she avoid him tripping over his words as he tried to peice them together. 

Killmongur continued to watch him for a little bit. He was either deticated to finding; whatever he thought he could find underneath a bench. Or, and this was the most likly thing, he was trying to avoid making eye contact. Fuck, this kid was a peice of work. What the hell had given him the nervous to the tenth degree  tick he had. 

“Somewhere in that last word there is a question,” she offered. “ out with it kid. I aint gonna bite you.

“I don’t know about that,” he mumbled, though mostly to himself. Everything in this game seemed capable of biting, and there was no monster more dangerous than other players--not that he actually thought Killmongur would help him. Somedays, he actually sort of thought she liked him. 

“Is there a Mr. Or Mrs. Killmongur I’m going to have to make repairs for?” he asked finally. He probably shouldn’t ask, probably shouldn’t care--what did it matter to him if she was dating someone?--but he’d always been too curious for his own good. And anyway, she was still smiling. That had to be a good sign, right?

He sat up, leaning against the edge of the bench and looking around at the empty tracks. Maybe there really was nothing here--or maybe just not under the bench. He got up and began to turn over rocks nearer to the tracks. Maybe there’d be a key under one. Or something. 

[playercharon]

loginoccasus‌:

Rae squinted skeptically, then playfully rolled her eyes at him. She clearly didn’t believe that was his intention. A happy accident? Maybe. Rae clapped Charon on the shoulder, her attempt at reassuring him that she was just joking around with him without actually verbalizing it. “You might’ve burnt a few caterpillars to a crisp,” she offered, with a shrug of her shoulders.

As soon as she heard the ruffle of leaves, Rae turned expectantly to Charon. She’d kill the monster camouflaged within the bushes if he didn’t want to, of course, but soon enough he took the reigns himself. Rae raised her eyebrows. In some strange way, she felt proud of him. “Nice job,” she responded first, then put an arm around his shoulder. “It has for me. Stop thinking about them as live creatures, they’re nothing more than code. It’s when you hurt another player that the guilt should set in.” Rae had killed another player once, her cursor was orange for a long time, the Vixens were the only ones that’d ever seen it as anything but the green hue it was now. She hadn’t done it because she wanted to. She did it because she had to. Because it was him or her.

Her gaze went vacant when she thought about it, but his question reattracted her focus. She nodded in response, and held her bow out to him. It sometimes felt like an extension of herself, handing it to someone else felt foreign.

“You’re welcome, World, for ridding you of those troublesome caterpillars,” he said, nodding his head in mock pride. But when it was over, when a real monster was on the ground, tongue out and then pixelated into nothing, his smile quickly disappeared. He gulped, feeling a pit in his stomach the size of a watermelon. He nodded along to everything Rae said, but he knew it would be a while before he stopped seeing that little face when he closed his eyes. 

It shouldn’t have been so hard, not really. She was right: they weren’t real. But they looked real, sounded real, squealed like they were real when they died. And if he thought about it too much--that none of them were real, that they were all just pixels, that his real body was lying somewhere in a different world and this one was all an allusion...well, he wouldn’t sleep for a week. The first few months in the game it had been the only thing he could think of. Now, repression was the name of the game, acceptance still too far away. 

Taking her bow carefully, as if he was cradling a new born child, he began to look over the design. He knew better than to assume that any weapon was just a weapon to people in this game; people got attached--even if these were codes too. “I could fix this one if you wanted. I mean I can start from scratch. But. If you want this one to just be a little smoother. I can make some quick repairs. Shouldn’t take more than maybe...a day?”

[playercharon]

zyrahaas‌:

Killmongur couldn’t help but chukle at the slight look of dissapointment? When he realized the bottle was empty. Intresting, she wouldn’t have taken him as a drinker; but she save this information for a later date. Nodding her head when he said her little hack would work. 

Was he attempting small talk. Cute.

Though she supposed it was better then him stuttering over every other word when ever they were around each other. It made things significantly more difficult to understand him, so she would take this. 

“Oh life’s just grand. I’m still stuck in a psychotic death-trap of a game. Up side, i’m not dead yet.”  she mused chipperly looking out onto the abandon lanscape around them. At his question she frowned hunching forward, looking under the bench at the Charon now. “Are you implying that I’m clumsy? Cause I take offense to that.” grinning mischievously before sitting straight once more. “Aside from my leg most resently, nah I’ve been good. If anything I’ve been breaking faces and hearts of other peeps left and right. Fun times.” 

“You might be,” he said without looking up. He’d found an interesting looking dent under the bench and was now studying it in depth behind the “magnifying glass” of the bottle. “We could all be dead and this is purgatory. In that case we’ll never leave until we prove ourselves really evil or really good. But the green and red cursors show that, and no one’s poofed yet. So maybe we’re alive,” he concluded. 

When she actually took the time to look under the bench and face him, however, he flushed. “N-no,” he said, the stutter and nerves back with a vengeance. “Not clumsy. Just busy. Fighting people and being cool and stuff.” 

He tried to look busy with his search again just to avoid her looking at him. Once safely back under the bench, he asked, “Hearts?” Somehow, he hadn’t imagined her dating. But heart breaking? Well, that made sense. 

[playercharon]

hadeswrxtes‌:

“I need to be zen because if I’m not zen, my world falls apart. It’s my shtick, if you haven’t noticed. Someone up there marvels at my misery.” He pointed up at the sky before pinching at the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath in before once again resting his hands on his hips in an attempt to allow the tension to roll off his shoulders. It was a long day and he was… he was grumpy. 

“I’m sorry. I… A lots going on right now.” He turned to Charon, lips pressed tightly together before shaking his head. He knew where the other player was coming from, knew the frustration he must be feeling… 

“I’m a battle strategist. There are many more for you to choose from to bother about this.” He ran a hand through his hair before taking a step closer, lowering his voice despite the fact that they were the only ones around. “I get it, Charon. I know what it feels like to feel like people aren’t moving. But if you haven’t noticed, a floor never fully reveals itself after its opened. Velia is more than just a place we have to fight out way through. It’s proven time and time again that it’s a waiting game.” He mentally cursed the developers before looking around. 

“Something’s going to pop up, and when it does, we’ll figure things out then. Now, we just gotta see what this floor has in store for us.” The only way out, at the end of the day, was to play the game master’s game. 

“That probably didn’t make you feel better…”

“You’re kind of grumpy today, huh?” Charon said, the words escaping him before he could think better of them. “Does that help you think?” He scrunched up his face into what he hoped was an intimidating looking scowl. It was not. It also hurt, holding his jaw all stiff like that. He let the frown disappear and rubbed his chin while he continued to follow the older archer. “I don’t think the game is programmed to make any one player miserable,” he said instead, perhaps taking the other’s words a bit too seriously. “Maybe if everything keeps going wrong, you’re just making the wrong decisions. Like one time, I thought it would be a good idea to bring a little monster home as a pet. Protect me and my roommate, you know? But then it ate my homework. So that was a bad idea.”

He stopped walking when Hades did, waiting for some big revelation or plan the moment the man came closer. What he said instead made the boy frown.  “I didn’t mean to bother you Mr. Hades, sir,” he said quickly. He didn’t want to bother anyone. The more Hades spoke, though, the more defeated Charon looked. He nodded to show he understood, shoulders sagging. “Okay, Mr. Hades. I’ll just...” He looked over his shoulder. “I’ll just look around on my own until it shows itself. I’m sorry I bothered you, Sir.” 

[playercharon]

zcndi‌:

Jal started to feel dizzy as Charon spoke; grateful that he was switching topics, the mage watched him capture images of the tracks. They knew plenty of places for - oof. “Shit!” they exclaimed, stumbling back as he made contact. “The fuck, dude?”

He was apologizing at the same time as them asking what the fuck was going on, so they just shut their mouth and let him continue. “Library. Let’s go.”

“Have you ever studied codes in-game before?” they asked, remembering Viv was his mentor and they should probably set a good example.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, looking genuinely worried that they were going to leave or hit him or, worse, call Venus and tell her to fire him. That would be way, way worse. He could work with a black eye, or one of his arms turned into a fin or something. But he needed to work. 

“Uh, yeah,” he said, jogging to keep up with Jal while fumbling through his inventory for a crystal at the same time. “I made a couple of games in high school. And I took a computer class. Wasn’t really helpful though. I got some books from the library that were better. Mine was kind of like a pacman game. You know that really old game?” He made the motion with his hand of something with a big mouth eating the air. 

“What about you?”

[playercharon]

loginoccasus‌:

“Interesting,” Rae hummed. The second arrow she released hummed similarly as it flew through the air, a short lived sound that ended as soon as it hit yet another monster. Her experience bar hardly budged. The monsters were too weak, so much so that their deaths almost felt senseless. They would cause a tremendous boost in Charon’s experience, if only he could actually hit something with a heartbeat.

The blaze he had started cast a glow upon the immediate area, and bathed her in warmth. “Incinerating the foliage doesn’t help anyone.” she smiled, indicating that she meant the comment to be lighthearted. 

“Maybe a new bow is all I need to spice things up.”

“Well, maybe it could scare out some of the little monsters that were hiding under the leafs,” he mumbled, though he didn’t really believe that himself and, anyway, the second she looked at him, he ended up flushing and looking away, pretending to fiddle with something on his staff--as if it had buttons or settings or anything but a piece of stick that he was supposed to will power into. 

He took a deep breath and tried again, and this time, the littlest monster of the bunch that was hiding away in the same bush, was hit straight in the chest and keeled over. “Yes, yes!” Charon cheered. But then he saw the creature fall, looking sad and pitiful, and he frowned. “Does it ever feel less crappy?” he asked. 

He put his staff down and came a little closer, putting his hand out in a silent ask to see her bow. “Can I?” 

[eddiediaz1992]

@standup4justice: was gunna marie kondo my house today but then i realized Im unhealthily attached to material possessions and would rather die with all of it in a fire.

[playercharon]

zyrahaas‌:

“Right cause I carry a magnifying glass all the time.” she frowned. Killmongure’s head tilted to the side as she watched Charon crawl under the bench like some kind of car mechanic. If he thought that she was going to be rolling around in the dirt looking for “clues” the kid had another thing coming. Still, she figured it was best to let him realise the likelihood of him finding anything worth a damn was slim to none. 

With a chuckle ( because what eles could she do) Killmongur took a seat on the bench he was under. After letting the kid work on her bionic for a number of years. She knew all to well that once he got started on a task; charon had to finish. Was it because he’s a genius or maybe a little neurotic ? Mo had no idea but hey what could it hurt. 

Pulling out an almost empty bottle of ale. Mo chugged the remain continents; before passing it under to the young man, “ It’s not a magnifying glass but try it anyway.” she huffed, before streching out on the bench hands behind her head soaking up the semi cloudless day. 

“That’s so cool,” said Charon, completely missing the sarcasm and putting his hand out from under the bench, as if expecting her to give it over. “You’re like a real detect--oh.” He sat up when he saw that what he’d been handed was not at all a magnifying glass but a bottle. At first he thought she was offering him a drink--which would be really cool, since he couldn’t buy any on his own--but then he realized the glass was empty. But clear. 

“That’ll work,” he agreed and slid back under the bench. “So um, how is your life?” he asked as he searched around. “You haven’t broken anything in a while, so that’s got to be good, right?” Every time she came in for a job, he almost had a heart attack, but he also learned a bit more about mechanics each and every time he fixed them up for her. He was getting better. And faster. 

[playercharon]

zcndi‌:

They nodded when he suggested someone wanted to help. The implication that they knew - that people working on the game, that their uncle - knew what would happen felt impossible. Otherwise, why didn’t anyone stop him? Why didn’t anyone protect them?

Why would Ben give them the game if he knew they’d get stuck?

“I doubt it,” they said finally, their eyes unable to lift beyond the tracks. “I don’t think anyone would let this happen. Unless they were all sadists.”

Pressing their lips together, they watched him connect the dots of what they’d said about pictures. “Take the pictures, we’ll go to the library and see what we can dig up, yeah?”

“If one man’s this evil, lots could be,” Charon said without looking up, turning over every rock in a two foot radius of his boots. He didn’t want to believe that anyone was really a bad guy, but the game maker sure had proved he was, and if he was, that left the world open to all sorts of unpleasant possibilities. Still, when he looked up and saw how unnerved Jal suddenly was--almost as if it was personal--he shut his mouth tight and nodded. 

“Okay.” He backed up all the way to the tracks, praying a train wouldn’t come any time soon, and snapped a picture once he had almost all of the stop and its stones in frame. And then he heard the whistle of the train’s approach. “Shit,” he mumbled and jumped back onto safe ground with so much momentum, he ran into Jal. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said, backing up as fast he could--without falling right back into the path of death. “Yeah. Um. Library. Let’s go.” 

[playercharon]

loginoccasus‌:

“I need to change something,” Rae commented, moreso to herself than anyone else despite being surrounded by other players. She pulled back the string of a bow to test the draw weight. Every few months, she became fixated on training. There was always one reason or another. Her aim was nearly impeccable, and yet she continued to obsess. In the process, the things that really mattered often fell to the wayside. “I feel stuck, you know? In a rut, or whatever.” A low level monster poked its head out from behind a shrub, and Rae let the air fly. It found its home in the monster’s neck with a noise that used to turn her stomach, now she hardly even noticed it.

Charon’s face crumpled, partially in disgust, partially in sympathy as the little monster keeled over, shrieking, and then went silent for good. He’d never killed before. Not a player. Not an NPC. Not a monster. Nothing. For the first two years of the game, he wasn’t allowed anywhere near the battles; after that, with only a few months of training under his belt, he just wasn’t that much help. Yet. 

That was why he was out here, his staff raised, aiming for a tree as he shot a blast of fire--and missed entirely, setting a nearby shrub ablaze instead. 

He turned back to the former Vixen. “I could make you a new bow,” he offered. Fighting he might be bad at, but making things? He had that very well under control. 

[playercharon]

zcndi‌: 

Jal put their hands on their hips and shrugged. “Dick didn’t personally code us,” they reminded him with a shake of their head.

Again, it was another solid point they’d ignore. Not the rock point, though. He was literally always so close until he went off the rails ( no train puns intended ) and into another wild thought. Radish had wild leaps, but Charon had reasonable steps to the madness. “You think spending all day turning over rocks will help? What if we took pictures of the tracks instead and tried to see if your secret code idea was right instead.”

“Okay so the game makers, whatever. That’s even more reason! Maybe one of them wants to help us, added in some secret coding to get us out, went behind his back.” He didn’t look up as he spoke, too busy turning over every work within a two foot radius of his tennis shoes. “Leave no ruck unturned,” he said. He’d heard that somewhere. The Bible? Class? He couldn’t remember. 

Luckily, Jal offered a very reasonable solution and he stopped searching. “Oh,” he said, standing up. “Yeah, that might be faster.” 

[playercharon]

zyrahaas‌:

She rose a brow listening to Charon explain. When Killmongur agreed to come with him to the new floor. She should have known it would be like this. He was young, optimistic, and more than a little nervous about things. The point? He was a fucking kid and the fact that she was letting him work on any of her bionics after this explanation had her questioning her sanity. Or she was a cynical mother fucker. “ Look I hear what your saying professor gadget but… come on. You think shithead Aspen would make a trap door out of the game on floor 62?”

It was wishful thinking. Something Killmongur gave up on a long time ago. But got damn it; she did hate busting the kiddos nice little bubble he had going. “ Tell you what, I’ll help you look but I honestly don’t think we’re going to find anything. Accept for clues to the next floor.” 

He still couldn’t really believe she’d come with him. On the journey over, he’d poked at her hand at least ten different times, expecting his own to sink through and her to be an illusion. After more than a couple years of fumbling through repairs whenever she came in for a fix--the repairs were perfect, even if her being there made his hands shake--he hadn’t really gotten used to her presence. She was strong, and beautiful, and important, and he? He hadn’t ever even graduated high school. For a moment, that thought consumed him--he might never graduate high school, and now he was nineteen!--but he shook it off and focused on Killmongur and the task ahead of them. 

“Thank you,” he said ignoring everything else she’d said. “Do you have a magnifying glass?” He crouched down near one of the benches then shimmied under it to see if there was any secret writing on the underside. 

[playercharon]

zcndi‌:

“A code?” Jal asked skeptically. “Dick couldn’t make a functioning code if his life depended on it. You don’t think that’s a red herring?”

Not that they’d admit it, but it was a clever idea. Well, not the one about a door that brought them back to real life or something. That was Mercutio-level. It was too late in the game, no pun intended, to get a quick out anyway. “It’s not like we haven’t been fooled before.”

‘‘We’re all codes!” Charon pointed out, tugging at his own sleeve. He didn’t tug at theirs--he wasn’t going to touch them without permission--but he did gesture at them. “We’re all walking talking living computer codes. The answers could even be inside us. Super meta.” 

“Exactly.” He pointed at them as if they’d just gotten the jackpot. “We’ve been fooled. Now maybe we’re getting fooled into thinking things are hopeless when mayyyybe, the way out is under....this rock.” He crouched down and turned over the stone at his foot. Nothing. “Okay maybe not that one. But there’s a lot more rocks here.” 

[playercharon]

playervalentine‌:

“I love the enthusiasm, kid. It’s the kind of thing I love to see in the youth,” replied Valentine. “And I’m not dismissing your idea. There probably is some hidden code or thing on this floor, given what we’ve seen before. But I doubt it’s the door out of the game.”

He advised, “Keep your expectations reasonable.” 

Charon frowned on instinct. Youth? He was nineteen! He’d been out of the orphanage for over a whole year; that had to count for something, right? Anyway, he wasn’t surprised that no one was going along with his plan; after three years, everyone seemed to have given in to the inevitable, to believe they really were never getting out. He shrugged. 

“Maybe that’s what he wants us to think. Keep your expectations reasonable, and then we never look for something bigger.” Wasn’t that what all forces of power did? The older generations taught the younger that change was impossible, to be grateful for what they had and not ask for more. That a poor Black kid from a bad neighborhood wasn’t going to go anywhere big, so he might as well be happy with the small stuff. “It can’t hurt to try, right?”

He paused, shifting from foot to foot. “So is that a no on helping me look or...?”

[playercharon]

hadeswrxtes‌:

Hades let out a groan, jogging to a stop before finally turning to Charon with a frown. “Listen to me.” He began with narrowed eyes, hands on his hips as he stared down the younger player. “Do I look like I’m in battle strategy mode? No. I’m trying to be zen right now. I’m trying to get feeling back into my legs and my ass, and ultimately, I’m trying to enjoy this very rare occasion where I’m not a complete emotional wreck.” 

He took a deep breath before taking a step towards Charon, frown tugging at his brows. 

“There is no we. Okay? I don’t even know how you knew I’d be here.” 

“Did you put a tracker in my shoe or something?”

Charon had no intention of stopping--would have followed Hades wherever he went--so when the man finally stopped, the younger player collided directly into his back. “Ooof,” he mumbled, staggering backwards and rubbing his head. For a bunch of pixels sewn together, Hades’ back muscles sure packed a punch. 

“Why would you be zen?” he asked. He blushed a little at Hades mentioning his ass but otherwise ignored this. He’d heard about the man’s injuries--he’d tried to visit him in the hospital, but the NPC nurses wouldn’t let him. “We have to fight, don’t we? Isn’t that how we get out, by fighting? You’re the battle strategist!”

He worried his bottom lip through his teeth, hoping he hadn’t overstepped. Only, he’d thought that was what Hades did: fight and plan for more fights. “No, I--well, not a tracker. I just asked around a bit. Come on, whatever you’re planning, I can help.” Hades had to be planning something, right? It just didn’t seem like him to be taking a break, taking a “zen” vacation.